


Blowback

by sinaddict



Series: Jack's Smirking Revenge [2]
Category: Profiler
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-12
Updated: 2010-04-12
Packaged: 2017-10-08 22:34:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinaddict/pseuds/sinaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My idea of comfort is fucking or vengeance."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blowback

**Author's Note:**

> Set during an AU season 3/4, roughly a year and a half after 'poor unfortunate souls.'

**2000**

"I'm not drunk enough to be hallucinating," John slurred his words just the tiniest bit, whiskey bottle dangling between his fingers over the side of the couch. He squinted at the woman standing in the doorway, only half-convinced that what he was saying was actually true, but still continued, "And even if I was, I'd be hallucinating Kate and not you."

"I'm hurt, John, really," Frances did not look or sound hurt, not even a little. Her hair was brown again, he noticed, and tied back in a messy ponytail that left layers framing her face. She was dressed like a typical college student in jeans and a gray zip-up sweater with 'MIT' scrawled across the front of it in red block letters. He didn’t ask about the sweatshirt, even though it seemed like he should. "And after I came all this way to check on you."

"What's 'all this way'?" he asked with a complete lack of interest as he took another swig of whiskey. She wandered in, straightening the picture frames on the wall and running her fingers along the stereo equipment. There was a new tattoo across the back of her neck, partially obscured by her hair, but it was too blurry for him to make out. Or his eyes were too blurry. He couldn't bring himself to care, either way. Her shoes clicked on the hardwood floor with each step. Kate's used to do the same thing, he remembered.

"From Paris."

"Huh," he watched the television screen without actually registering any of the images. Kate liked the background noise of it when she was falling asleep. "You speak French?"

"No," she seated herself on the coffee table in front of him, just to the left so that he could still see the television. (As if he cared about the fucking TV.) Taking the bottle from his hand and raising it to her lips—they’re a dark pink, like the dress Kate wore on their first date—she took a small shot and winced, pressing her mouth to the back of her sleeve and leaving a dark pink smudge across the fabric. "My sister does."

"Your sister's dead."

Admittedly, that wasn't the most sensitive way to say it, but he assumed she already knew. After all, they'd found her sister, and her mother, covered in pink rose petals with some ridiculous nursery rhyme scrawled on the wall in blood. They'd each been shot, he recalled, in the exact same manner Sharon Lesher had been. It didn't take a genius to see the connection.

"Not that sister."

So, she did know. “You kill her?” he phrased it as a question, but his tone implied otherwise.

Her expression gave nothing away. In an interrogation room, he’d have taken it as a sign of guilt. She merely said, "Tell me about your girl."

"She's dead, too." John took the bottle back from her and ignored the pink lipstick around the rim as he drank again. He seemed to be building a tolerance to whiskey: it was taking too long to get drunk, and it wasn’t lasting long enough to be worth the effort.

"Yeah, so I read," she studied him, tilting her head just enough that her hair fell across her face. She took the bottle again, drinking briefly before passing it back to him. At least she had the sense to not try to talk him out of drinking his problems away like Sam and Rachel had been trying to do. "What was she like?"

"Why do you care? You worked for Jack—you’ve probably killed dozens just like her."

He really should have cared more about those nameless, faceless victims, but he had the name and face of a victim haunting him every second of the day already. Besides, there weren’t any killings with Jack’s signature since he died, so maybe... ah, fuck it, he thought. He wasn’t FBI anymore, so why bother trying to justify Frannie’s crimes?

"I don't kill--" his snort cut her off, and she amended, "Innocent people."

"Define 'innocent.'"

"Do you care?"

"No. Get out."

"No," she said patiently, as if she was dealing with a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. Fuck her patience and fuck her, John thought. "Tell me about her."

"Fuck you, _Jude_."

She arched an eyebrow, looking amused. "Would that make you feel better?"

He rolled his eyes. He didn't have enough alcohol to deal with her. "What do you want?"

"A lot of things." Her smile turned icy, fingers against his as she took the bottle from him again. She never broke eye contact as she did another shot. It should have unnerved him, but it didn't. Her voice was raspy, nearly an octave lower as she told him, "You're asking the wrong questions."

"I don't care enough to ask the right ones."

"I know." The way she said it—the hint of tears in her eyes as she bit her lip and looked away from him—he could have almost believed that she really did know what it was like. Then he remembered that she considered fucking Jack and Sharon Lesher to be her family. "But you will, eventually."

"Not likely."

"Okay, then." She straddled his lap, and with the choice of either shoving her off or maintaining his hold on the whiskey, he chose the latter. Glaring at her, he drew the bottle closer until it hit against her hip with a soft thump. She laughed mirthlessly, the sound almost as bitter as he felt at that moment. He told himself that he didn't care if she bruised. "You don't want to ask me questions. You don't want to tell me about your girl. So, we'll play it your way."

Before he could ask what she meant by 'his way,' she kissed him, hard and fast, harsh in a way it never was with Kate. The lack of resemblance to Kate was the only reason he let it go on, he told himself. (It had nothing to do with hazy memories of her hair tangled between his fingers and her lips bruised and swollen against his while he lay in a Boston hospital.) The bottle fell to the floor with a dull clink, and for a few brief, blissful seconds, he lost himself in her and forgot everything but the feel of her skin beneath his palms.

Halfway to the bedroom, he swore he smelled Kate's perfume lingering in the doorway and it all came rushing back. He shoved Frannie away from him so hard that she crashed into the wall with an audible thud before she managed to regain her balance. She stared at him, lipstick slightly smeared, hair tugged free of her ponytail, sweatshirt unzipped to reveal a lacy black bra, and he was dangerously close to losing whatever semblance of sanity he'd managed to maintain. "Get out," he said simply.

"Make me."

Jesus Christ, how no one had killed the girl yet was utterly beyond him, he thought.

Stalking toward her with poorly contained fury, he invaded her personal space, slamming a hand on the wall to the left of her head. She merely raised an eyebrow, glancing toward his hand before meeting his glare head-on. Her tone bordering on taunting, she asked, "What are you gonna do, John? Throw me out? Mope around and drink some more? Way to honor your girl's memory."

And just like that, he snapped.

"It should've been me!" he roared, putting his fist through the plaster covering of the wall inches to the right of her head. She didn't even flinch, and for some reason it just pissed him off that much more. The rage and grief coursed through his system like acid. "I had a fucking gun--it's my fucking job! She was a goddamn kindergarten teacher who wrote kids' books..." He slowly became aware of tears streaming down his face, and all he could do was repeat desolately, "It should've been me. It should've been... Why wasn't it me?"

She sighed, tugging his hand free from the wall and leading him back to the couch. She didn’t offer platitudes as she looked over his bleeding, bruised knuckles, but said softly, "People die, John." Catching his gaze, she shook her head slightly when he started to respond, continuing, "There’s always somebody standing by a casket saying it’s not fair, and most of the time, there’s somebody else nearby who’s just grateful it wasn’t them."

“This is your idea of comfort?”

“My idea of comfort is fucking or vengeance.” She said it so flatly, without the slightest hint of a proposition, that some ingrained cop-instinct in the back of his mind twinged with the details of Ariana and Janet Malone’s murders. Fucking or vengeance, he turned the words over in his mind—he knew she grieved Sharon Lesher’s death deeply. “Pick one and I’ll be happy to offer it.”

He still wanted vengeance so badly he could taste it, but the newly returned badge on his end table kept him from pursuing it. Reaching out, he wrapped his still-bleeding hand around the back of her neck as she tensed, and drew her mouth to his in a kiss that wasn’t as harsh and punishing as he had been before. She melted into it, giving him the only kind of comfort she could, the only kind of comfort he thought was worth a damn after everything else.

He tried to commit to memory the way she responded to each touch—the way she shivered beneath his hands as he stripped off her sweatshirt and tossed it aside, the startled gasp when he slid his hand down the back of her jeans and kissed her shoulder—like it was information he’d be able to use more than just this one time. “Please,” she whimpered between kisses as she struggled with the button and zipper on his pants, unwilling to pull away long enough to solve the problem. “I want…”

“What?” he cupped the back of her head, drawing her mouth back to his for a deep, probing kiss as he deftly unhooked her bra, and whatever she said in response was lost, muffled against his lips. Her fingernails dug into his back, leaving marks he was sure he’d feel come morning, and she clung to him like she wanted to crawl inside him. This time he didn’t even bother with trying to get them to his bedroom. “Fuck,” he murmured against the corner of her mouth as he pressed into her with a single, smooth thrust, “Jude.”

She shuddered as he said it, gasping and rocking up to meet him. “John…”

He refused to think about Kate.

When he woke the first time, he traced the letters of the tattoo across the back of her neck in the dim light filtering through the window, remembering the same letters in rhinestones on the back pocket of her jeans as he tried to unobtrusively pick the lock on the chains tethering him to the floor of a nondescript warehouse a couple years earlier. She sighed as he pressed his lips to her tattoo, and breathed in a voice barely above a whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he mouthed the words against her neck. Either she couldn’t hear them, or she just didn’t want to answer, because she was silent again as he closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her hair.

When he woke the second time, she was gone.

*

“John. My office. Now.”

John looked up from the case file he had been discussing with Rachel in time to see Bailey striding away. “Jesus, I’ve only been back one fucking day,” he shook his head at Rachel’s raised eyebrow and inquisitive look. “It’s not like I’ve even been in the field to screw anything up yet.”

“Maybe you made employee of the month.”

“Oh, very funny,” John rolled his eyes and reluctantly got to his feet. Rachel’s sense of humor was too much like his own most days, and sarcasm wasn’t as funny when it was directed at him. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, bring liquor.”

“Hell, no,” Rachel smirked at him. “You don’t share well.”

Making his way to Bailey’s office, he passed George on the stairs, who caught his arm and leaned in to say quietly. “They found Brill murdered. IAB’s demanding answers from you.”

“Fuck me,” John closed his eyes briefly. Maybe he should have gone to confession more often, since God was clearly punishing him for something. “Should I get a lawyer?”

“Talk to Bailey first,” George advised, squeezing John’s arm lightly before releasing him. “I’m here if you need me.”

Every step toward Bailey’s office was like a step toward a firing squad. Hell, he might have even preferred the firing squad. The bagel he’d had for breakfast was a leaden weight in the pit of his stomach. “Close the door,” Bailey said curtly as he gestured to the chair across from his desk, his expression like stone. “Where were you the day before yesterday at one-thirty?”

“In the morning or the afternoon?” John prayed it was the afternoon, because there was no way in hell he was telling Bailey that he’d probably been in bed with Frances at one-thirty that morning. His train of thought abruptly derailed. Shit, Frances...

Fucking or vengeance.

He barely heard Bailey say, “Afternoon.”

It took him a moment to think past the sudden realization that Frances had probably killed Brill for him, and another to remember where he actually had been at the time. He had never thought he’d be grateful for the mandatory meeting with the department shrink, but he might’ve kissed the asshole for this. “Meeting with Dr. Blakely to get cleared for going back in the field.”

Something in Bailey’s expression eased. “You’re either the luckiest man in Atlanta, or the unluckiest, and I can’t decide which.” Sliding a case file across the desk to John, he said, “Martin Brill’s bullet-riddled body was found in the outdoor rose collections of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens this morning.”

Even though he already knew it, he found himself saying softly, “Shit.” It had been so much easier to live in denial about Frannie, to play the occasional cat and mouse games, catching her and then giving her the opportunity to slip him so he wouldn’t have to arrest her. Even knowing she’d worked for Jack, even acknowledging to her face what that meant, he could tell himself that maybe she had nothing to do with any of Jack and Sharon Lesher’s crimes.

But this? There wasn’t enough denial in him to pretend the roses and the bullets were a coincidence.

“Shit,” he said again, scrubbing a hand down his face and giving the file a cursory glance. His eyes were drawn to the crime scene photo: a piece of paper pinned—literally—to the body, and he flipped to the next photo for a close-up. The only foreign language he had under his belt was a rusty command of tourist Spanish, but he’d bet anything the note was written in French. The single ‘J’ at the bottom only added to his suspicions. “What’s this say?”

“We’re not sure, yet.” Bailey flipped through the file a moment before settling on a page. “It’s a cipher—cryptographers think they’ve decoded it, but it’s in colloquial French and Sam doesn’t recognize most of the slang.”

“Can I borrow this?” John asked, holding up the translation and studiously ignoring Bailey’s faintly suspicious look. “I’ll ask around the building and see if anybody gets it.”

“You can’t be involved in this case.”

“No involvement,” John promised. “I hate unfinished puzzles.”

“Most cops do,” Bailey nodded, gesturing toward the door. John deliberately pushed aside the guilt at how he repaid Bailey for all the shit Bailey let him get away with. “If you find somebody who understands it, send them to me.”

After leaving Bailey’s office, John found George in the command center, surrounded by computers, parts, and tools. “Don’t those things usually work better when you can’t see the insides?” John asked with a hint of humor. George had always tinkered with electronics when he was worried, and John didn’t need three guesses to figure out what he was worried about. “I’m clear. T.O.D. was while I was meeting with Blakely.”

“Thank God,” George sighed heavily, laying a tiny screwdriver down next to some piece of electronic equipment that John didn’t recognize. “I knew you didn’t do it.”

“Last week, I might have.”

“That was last week.”

“Hey, you lived in Quebec for a while, right?” John didn’t wait for an answer, handing the translation of the note to him. He doubted Frannie would have said anything in the note to implicate him, but he didn’t understand why she’d use a coded foreign language instead of sending him something privately. “Sam doesn’t know French slang. You understand it?”

George looked over the image, his expression telling John that he did understand the language, if not the intent. “Yeah. It says, ‘Fucking and vengeance. I’m sorry. –J. P.S. I don’t kill INNOCENT people.’.” The look on his face must have given something away, because George frowned slightly with concern as he asked, “Does that mean something to you?”

His throat closed up and he couldn’t have found the words to answer even if he could sort out his riotous thoughts, so he just shook his head. George looked entirely unconvinced, but because he was George, didn’t push him on the subject and returned to the dissembled computers.

And John tried to work out whether he felt guilty because he shared responsibility for Brill’s death, or because he didn’t feel guilty enough.


End file.
